Bacon: a comprehensive computational benchmarking framework for evaluating targeted chromatin conformation capture-specific methodologies

Chromatin Conformation Capture (3C)-based technologies have enabled the accurate detection of topological genomic interactions and the adoption of ChIP techniques to 3C-based protocols makes it possible to identify long-range interactions. To analyze these large and complex datasets, computational methods are undergoing rapid and expansive evolution. Thus, a thorough evaluation of these analytical pipelines is necessary to identify which commonly used algorithms and processing pipelines need to be improved. Here we present a comprehensive benchmark framework, Bacon, to evaluate the performance of several computational methods. Finally, we provide practical recommendations for users working with HiChIP and/or ChIA-PET analyses.